The Devil himself has also, on certain occasions, prescribed flagellations, as an atonement for sins; which is certainly wonderful enough. It is related in the Life of St. Virgil, that a Man possessed by the Devil, was fustigated with four rods, by the Devil’s prescription, for having stolen four wax-candles from the Saint’s altar. ‘I am not come (said the possessed Man) of my own accord; but I have been compelled to it: I have carried off the wax-candles and offerings that were on the tomb of the Man of God; and if they are not speedily returned, my Master will come with seven spirits worse than himself, and will for ever continue in me. However, when the candles, of which they had been a long while in search, were found again, by the Devil’s assistance, and brought back, the Devil directed them to fustigate the unhappy Man with as many besoms as there were candles.’ To these instances of flagellations voluntarily practiced among Devils, we ought not to omit to add one, in which the Devil was smartly flagellated in spite of his teeth, by a Saint, and a female Saint too; a fact which cannot fail to give the greatest pleasure to the Reader, who remembers the deplorable accounts that have been given in a former Chapter, of the wanton flagellations he has himself inflicted upon Saints. The name of the female Saint who thus gave the Devil his due, was _Cornelia Juliana_, as the Reverend Father Jesuit, Bartholomew Fisen, relates, in his book on the _Ancient Origin of the Festival of the body of Christ_. ‘One day (says he) the other Nuns heard a prodigious noise in the room of Cornelia Juliana, which turned out to be a strife she had with the Devil, whom, after having laid hold of him, she fustigated unmercifully; then, having thrown him upon the ground, she trampled him under her foot, and continued ridiculing him in the most bitter manner[108].’ The above Reverend Father has neglected to inform us, how the Devil came to be in Juliana’s room; but it is most likely he was come upon his usual antic errand of flagellating Saints, and meant to serve Juliana in the same manner: fortunately she was upon the watch, and proved too many for him. As for the dreadful noise that was to be heard in the Saint’s room, it was the natural consequence of the hard struggle that took place between her and the Devil, while they were thus striving who should flog the other.